The Dutch Experiment
The Dutch Experiment
10-20-2006
While working on the MSM HIV Timeline, I re-read Gabriel Rotello's classic AIDS book Sexual Ecology: AIDS and the Destiny of Gay Men and came across his reference to what I call the Dutch experiment.
For those of you who aren't familiar with Rotello's book -- and you all should be, it's an important work -- in it he details how the combination of anal sex and promiscuity which erupted in the 1970s led to the MSM AIDS epidemic.
And how after the appearance of AIDS, gay community leaders refused to consider measures which would have decreased the prevalence of either anal or promiscuity.
For example, very early on, in 1981, the same year that AIDS first appeared but long before anyone knew what was causing it or how it was spread, a New York physician who was involved with the early victims, Dr. Alvin Friedman-Kien, recommended that gay men stop having sex, or use condoms consistently until the cause of the new disease was found.
Why?
Because Friedman-Kien, based on the patients he was seeing, was certain that there was an infectious agent, and that it was being spread "sexually."
Specifically anally.
Thus condoms.
Larry Kramer, who was the co-founder of the NYC AIDS Service Organization, Gay Men's Health Crisis, asked his GMHC board members to endorse Friedman-Kien's views.
They refused, and instead, in a very public row, Kramer was accused of homophobia and anti-eroticism by gay playwright and ex-boyfriend Robert Chesley, among others.
Chesley subsequently died of AIDS.
Rotello characterized this refusal on the part of GMHC as "The Lost Window of Opportunity."
And he's right.
Because a lot of guys got infected between 81 and 84.
Chin demonstrated that the rate of NEW infections in SF, for example, was 20% in 1983.
That's very high.
If those had been prevented -- the epidemic would have been contained.
And someone like Brett -- who was probably infected in 82 -- would still be alive.
But the board of GMHC -- and I'm going to talk about this more below -- was very conventional and not willing to think radically.
My guess is that failure cost some of them their lives.
And literally millions more died around the world.
Now, Rotello talks about how prevention strategies evolved in 1984-85, after HIV was discovered and it was well known that HIV was spread through anal penetration.
And of course, the decision was made in the US that anal and promiscuity were to be sancrosanct, and that guys would be told to "use a condom, every time, every time."
Rotello comments, and I'm using the 1998 Plume paperback edition, p 101:
The other approach [to prevention] ... would have urged men to refrain from anal sex altogether in favor of things like oral sex and noninsertive activities like masturbation. Such a policy was followed in Holland until 1991. Men were encouraged to give up anal sex completely, and many apparently did. Cohort studies of Dutch gay men reported that the practice of anal sex declined dramatically from 1984 to 1985. Since the level of HIV prevlalence in these cohorts remained lower than in most American cities -- the rate of new infections actually reached zero in one cohort in 1987 -- this advice may have been quite effective.
So: Rotello says that "this advice" -- to give up anal in favor in of "noninsertive activities" -- "may have been quite effective."
Rotello cites as his source for this information King:
King, Edward. Safety in Numbers: Safer Sex and Gay Men. Routledge, 1993, p 46:
"The Netherlands provides a case-study of a country in which gay men were actively discouraged from using condoms for anal sex, in favor of giving up fucking altogether. ... It seems clear that in Holland, use of condoms played at most a small role in stopping the spread of HIV among gay men."
And there's another source -- this one I learned about from Dr Edward C Green -- a Dutch article titled "HIV Prevention Activities for Gay Men in
the Netherlands 1983-93":
. . . Key persons at that time were convinced that extreme efforts had to
be made to prevent an epidemic similar to that then unfolding in the
United States. . . . at that time there was considerable doubt about the
reliability of condoms.
[However,] from the moment the 'double message' was
adopted, there were reservations, especially among HIV educators,
about the feasibility of advocating abstinence. . . . In 1992 the NCAB
advised that both abstinence and condom use were to be considered
equivalent risk-reducing behavioural options . . . (p. 43)
[emphasis mine]
~ Harm Hospers and Cor Blom, "HIV Prevention Activities for Gay Men in
the Netherlands 1983-93" in Theo Sandfort (Ed.) The Dutch Response to
HIV Pragmaticism and Consensus. New York: Routledge, 1998.
Why did the Dutch think as they did?
Well, here's one Dutch study from 1987 which is actually quite well-known.
In it, Dutch researchers concluded that men who avoided anal sex and instead used "manual sexual techniques" did not contract HIV, even if they had multiple sexual partners:
As part of the prospective AIDS study in Amsterdam, blood samples were collected from 741 healthy homosexual men with multiple sexual partners, between October 1984 and May 1985. Samples were analyzed for the presence of antibodies to the human immunodeficiency virus (anti-HIV). Anti-HIV was demonstrated in 233 (31%) of the respondents. Seropositive respondents engaged in anal receptive sexual techniques with more sexual partners than did seronegative respondents, whereas seronegatives engaged in manual sexual techniques with more sexual partners than did seropositives. As far as it was possible to control for the interrelations between the measured variables, a direct relation with anti-HIV was established. This leads to the conclusion that when the number of sexual partners is considered a risk factor for HIV, a clear distinction should be made between the sexual techniques practiced with these partners. Two other risk factors for the presence of anti-HIV were the use of cannabis and of nitrite.
van Griensven GJP, Tielman RAP, Goudsmit J, et al. Risk Factors and Prevalence of HIV Antibodies in Homosexual Men in the Netherlands. Am J Epidemiol. 1987;125:1048-1057.
So: it had been established in 1987 -- almost two decades ago -- that non-anal alternatives worked.
And that telling guys to do anal with a condom -- didn't.
Why, given the success of the one and the failure of the other, did that not happen here?
Rotello:
Nonetheless, this approach was never seriously considered by gay AIDS groups in the United States. Anal sex had come to be seen as an essential -- possibly the essential -- expression of homosexual intimacy by the 1980s.
Rotello says "seen as essential" -- but that begs the question, by whom?
Rotello then quotes a medical doctor, Joe Sonnabend, whom Brett and I knew, and who was an internist -- not an ano-rectal surgeon:
Perhaps the most famous articulation of this view appeared in a 1985 New York Native interview with Joseph Sonnabend. "The rectum," Sonnabend said, "is a sexual organ, and it deserves the respect a penis gets and a vagina gets. Anal intercourse has been the central activity for gay men and some women for all of history. ... We have to recognize what's hazardous, but we shouldn't undermine an act that's important to celebrate."
That's an amazing statement.
Because Sonnabend is WRONG in EVERY particular.
The rectum is not a sexual organ.
As ano-rectal surgeon Dr. Stephen Goldstone points out on GayHealth.com:
Most of the nerve endings that sense pleasure are at the outside of your anus or within the first two inches. The rest of your rectum and colon do not have nerves that sense pleasure. While many guys will disagree with me, there is no physiological basis for most of the pleasure you derive higher up in your colon.
That's it -- "your rectum and colon do not have nerves that sense pleasure."
Nor is there any genital tissue.
So how can the rectum be a "sexual organ?"
It's not.
Even the small amounts of pleasure Goldstone asserts can be had fall apart under examination.
"There is no physiological basis," he says, "for most of the pleasure you derive higher up in your colon."
If there's no physiological basis for pleasure, then there's no physiological pleasure.
The pleasure is -- IMAGINARY.
It's an idea of sex.
NOT true sex.
Sex is physical.
Sex is genital.
We all know what genital sex feels like because we've all done it.
And we all know what it feels like to have an object pass through the bowel because we've all done that too.
And the two do not feel remotely the same.
So Sonnabend is speaking nonsense.
And he continues to speak nonsense and to compound the nonsense.
Sonnabend: Anal intercourse has been the central activity for gay men and some women for all of history.
NOT TRUE.
First of all, gay men qua "gay men" didn't exist till the 1970s.
Was Walt Whitman gay?
NO.
Lord Byron?
Hadrian?
Alexander?
NO.
Moreover, Rotello points out (p 42), and Sonnabend should certainly have known, that as little as 15 years earlier, anal had been denigrated among "gay men" -- oral, masturbation, and Frot were the "central activities."
And as JK Dover demonstrated in 1978 in his definitive book Greek Homosexuality, the most famous homosexualists in history practiced frottage.
Not anal.
Anal was proscribed.
Sonnabend: We have to recognize what's hazardous, but we shouldn't undermine an act that's important to celebrate.
More nonsense.
First of all, if "we have to recognize what's hazardous," what's hazardous is anal.
And sure we can undermine it.
The Dutch did it.
Did Dutch homosexuals fall apart?
Was gay subculture destroyed in Holland?
NO.
HIV prevalence dropped.
That was the only consequence.
For the brief period that the Dutch experiment was actually carried out.
Rotello's book is 332 pages long.
Yet less than one paragraph is devoted to the Dutch experiment.
Which was SUCCESSFUL.
Why doesn't Rotello further explore the one episode in MSM HIV prevention that actually succeeded?
I don't know.
Question: How was it that people like Joe Sonnabend were able to dominate the discussion?
Answer: Because it was their party.
From the beginning, American AIDS activists tended to be people who were very promiscuous and who did anal.
Because they were the people at most risk for the disease.
And they knew it.
What that meant is that when "safer sex" was being formulated, the people fashioning it were all analists.
People like myself tended not to get involved.
That may sound terrible, but fact is I wasn't real concerned about AIDS.
Particularly not in the early years.
I knew a lot of the guys who died and I knew that I didn't live the way they did.
What I didn't foresee was that people like Brett -- people who were on the fringes of the high-risk set -- would be caught up in the epidemic too.
But that's what happened.
A disease which had gotten its start among the hard partiers of Fire Island and The Saint and the St. Marks Baths spread to everyone else -- everyone else that is, who did anal.
But it was the hardcore analists who made up the bulk of the AIDS activists.
Looking back, I realize that in the early years I didn't take them seriously.
Why?
Because they weren't political.
Don't believe me?
Read Randy Shilts' And the Band Played On.
Paul Popham, Shilts observes, had prided himself on not getting involved in gay politics.
That was true of the vast majority of them.
They didn't come out of Gay Liberation, which was a radical philosophy and which demanded that one think radically.
Nor had they been involved in the struggles of the 1970s -- which were brutal.
People like the GMHC board members were, on the whole, very conventional guys.
A-gays.
Closeted and affluent.
Guys with good incomes and, sometimes, looks.
What I didn't foresee was how much money these people would ultimately raise and spend in pursuit of their particular and very warped vision of gay male life: analist and promiscuous -- which is at its core, consumerist and conformist.
And the degree to which they would be able, ten years down the road, to totally control the debate.
What I want you guys to understand is how regularly and unrelentingly you've been shafted by people like Sonnabend.
And the GMHC board.
And all the rest of what became AIDS Inc. / ANAL Inc.
The Dutch Experiment has been completely buried.
No one talks about it.
Except people like Dr. Green.
When I first met him online, he suggested that I contact Jaap Goudsmit, one of the lead Dutch researchers.
I did.
But Jaap's moved on -- his interests now are more purely virological.
So the Dutch *success* has been forgotten.
While the American *failure* dominates "HIV prevention" worldwide.
Quite a joke, isn't it?
Don't laugh too hard, however, because the joke's on you.
Would you like the truth to get out?
Or would you prefer to be denigrated as immature and incomplete for the rest of your life?
It's your choice.
Down in LA they're spending millions to put forth the idea that HIV is a gay disease.
It's not.
The Dutch proved it isn't.
But NO ONE knows it.
And that's to YOUR detriment.
Remember that no one ever held a vote on what would constitute "safer sex."
There was no referendum, no plebiscite.
No one asked YOU.
Instead, a tiny elite, many of them closeted and with no political experience, decided how EVERY man who has sex with men was going to live.
Including YOU.
And they're STILL doing it.
The content of prevention messages for gay men . . . has long been
markedly different from prevention messages in other European
countries. Until 1992, the Netherlands adopted a so-called 'double
message'. . . on abstinence from anal sex, with condom use in anal sex
being seen as an inferior behavioural option. Thus, the initial
message said: 'Avoid anal sex. If you can't avoid anal sex, use
special condoms.'
© All material Copyright 2006 by Bill Weintraub. All rights reserved.
Re: The Dutch Experiment
10-21-2006
Sonnabend: Anal intercourse has been the central activity for gay men and some women for all of history.
NOT TRUE.
First of all, gay men qua "gay men" didn't exist till the 1970s.
Was Walt Whitman gay?
NO.
Lord Byron?
Hadrian?
Alexander?
NO.
Thanks Bill for posting this information. This is one thing that has always got me. The BFD has tried it's best to turn such great MASCULINE men as you mention above into butt-bangers. Yet, historically, they were NOT cuntboys! They were simply MASCULINE men doing what masculine men have done for thousands perhaps even millions of years. And anal sex was NOT a part of that.
Re: The Dutch Experiment
10-21-2006
Claiming that men of years past--Alexander, Whitman and the like--were gay doesn't make sense.
If nothing else refutes this claim, fighting does. From what I understand, men fought (as they still do) face to face such as in boxing. In wrestling, moves wherein a wrestler has his opponent from behind usually was/is the wrestler resting his weight on the opponent's back for leverage and control, not on the opponent's butt.
Even in aggressive fighting, then, the natural stance is face to face. In fact, fighters avoid being taken from behind because they become vulnerable. In most contact sports, players try to avoid being taken from behind.
Did I not read on this site that for anal to work between two men, the two have to negotiate who will be receptive?
Natural sexual intercourse requires no negotiation because it's naturally face to face.
Redd
Re: The Dutch Experiment
10-26-2006
Hey Robert and Redd -- thank you.
I'm sorry -- I sort of forgot this message thread.
I'm still way too busy.
But you both raised important points.
Let's do Redd first:
Did I not read on this site that for anal to work between two men, the two have to negotiate who will be receptive?
Natural sexual intercourse requires no negotiation because it's naturally face to face.
Right: "Natural sexual intercourse requires no negotiation"
In the "risk reduction" approach to HIV prevention there's an acronym -- CNN.
Which stands for Condoms, Needles, and Negotiation.
And which begs the question -- why would you need to negotiate sex?
Again, that's the culture of mistrust which analism and the AIDS estabishment has fostered.
"Natural sexual intercourse requires no negotiation because it's naturally face to face."
Right.
My line about Frot is "all you need is two hard dicks and a smile."
You don't have to negotiate it because it's natural -- you just do it.
And that's part of the problem in this era of "safer sex educators" and a vast "HIV prevention" bureaucracy and indeed industry of condoms, lubes, pills, and other devices.
There's no infrastructure to Frot.
FROT is FREE.
You don't need doctors and lawyers and pharmacologists and water-based lubricants.
You just do it.
Whereas: "Did I not read on this site that for anal to work between two men, the two have to negotiate who will be receptive?"
Yes.
Since anal penetration is not a natural behavior, the issue of insertive and receptive has to be arranged.
Typically -- and this is without question one of the most odious aspects of analism / gay male life -- the individual is expected to self-define as "top," "bottom," or "versatile."
With some variations such as "more top"; or "versatile bottom."
These basic top-bottom categories are ubiquitous.
That's most easily seen on the profiles on the big gay dating / hook-up sites, where usually top / bottom is part of the profile headline or close to it.
And it's in that privileged spot because it's considered absolutely vital information.
As it is everywhere in gay life -- in bars, at parties, wherever gay males are talking about other males, the question arises VERY early in the conversation -- is he a top or a bottom?
Again, that piece of data is considered absolutely vital.
Because to the analists, you need one of each in order to have sex.
Early on, one of our guys commented that he'd actually heard a gay male ask, "What can two tops do?"
Meaning, how could two tops relate sexually?
Or two bottoms?
What we need to see is how clearly, in this regard, analism mimics heterosexism.
Within heterosexism, only male-female / top-bottom sex is true sex.
Two bottoms -- that is, two women -- can't have "real" sex.
Nor can two tops -- two men.
There has to be an insertive and a receptive partner.
And one must have a penis and the other a vagina.
That's heterosexism.
That's how it works.
And it's really reactionary.
In analism too, there has to be an insertive and a receptive partner.
Except in analism, one partner must have a penis and the other an anus.
That's analism.
That's how it works.
And it's really reactionary.
What's bizarre about the gender feminist love of analism is that analism posits that sex without penetration is not real sex.
If you said that to a lesbian you'd get punched out.
But it's okay to say it to a gay man.
"If it's not anal, it's not really gay."
Just like:
"If it's not vaginal, it's not really sex."
This aspect of analism is so utterly transparent that it would be laughable if the consequences weren't so dire.
It's also predictable.
Because minorities are reactive to majorities.
That doesn't mean that members of minority cultures cannot or should not be held responsible for their actions.
But their actions will very very very very very very very very very often -- be reactive.
Jews trying to look "Nordic."
African-Americans trying to look "white."
Those are reactions to the majority culture.
That's why a true liberation movement will put the emphasis on, let's say, "negritude" -- Black is beautiful.
That's why Jews in Israel speak Hebrew -- rather than English or Russian or French.
These are efforts to escape the tyranny of the majority and come into one's own culturally.
What's striking about gay male culture and analism is how COMPLICIT the leadership is in the oppression of its own people.
Frot is a uniquely male-male act.
If we're going to talk male same-sex sex, then clearly Frot is the truest form of male-male sex.
But as we saw in this message thread, a community leader like Joe Sonnabend -- and he was very influential in NYC -- instead opts to promote anal penetration and the rectum as the coorelative of the vagina / womb.
Again, it's a really striking self-oppressive behavior.
Mart Finn, who's a terrific writer and a very acute observer of gay male life, wrote a story, which he very generously has allowed us to display on this site, titled Studs.
Which is about two tops discovering Frot.
And he talks about these guys wanting to connect but thinking they can't -- because they're both tops.
Again, it would be funny -- if it weren't so destructive and so ubiquitous and such a self-oppressive behavior.
Now -- what about "gay history?"
Robert:
This is one thing that has always got me. The BFD has tried its best to turn such great MASCULINE men as you mention above into butt-bangers. Yet, historically, they were NOT cuntboys! They were simply MASCULINE men doing what masculine men have done for thousands perhaps even millions of years. And anal sex was NOT a part of that.
Right.
These are not cuntboys.
These are MASCULINE men.
Redd:
Claiming that men of years past--Alexander, Whitman and the like--were gay doesn't make sense.
Right.
It doesn't make sense.
But that doesn't stop people from doing it.
Case in point:
This paragraph from an opera review, of all things, in the New York Times.
The opera is Iphigénie en Tauride -- or Iphigenia in Taurus -- an 18th century blockbuster:
Among great operas of the past, this one has as close as there is to a gay love story at its core. Oreste, Iphigénie’s long-lost brother, is captured on the shores of Taurus along with his [male] companion, Pylade. In intense and physically tender portrayals, the robust, boyish baritone Lucas Meachem, as Oreste, and the ardent lyric tenor Paul Groves, as Pylade, suggest the romantic dimension of this devoted Greek friendship.
"A gay love story"
That's a real knee slapper.
Iphigénie en Tauride is an opera by Christoph Willibald Gluck -- an 18th century composer who could not possibly have considered his mythic characters, Orestes and Pylades, "gay."
Of course, Gluck may well have recognized that there was a "romantic dimension [to] this devoted Greek friendship."
It would be surprising if he hadn't.
This was the Enlightenment after all.
The era of Voltaire, Gibbon, and Rousseau.
But Gluck would not have conceptualized the ardent friendship of Orestes and Pylades as "gay," because "gay" is a late 20th century referent.
And Gluck, though popular in his day, died in 1787.
Almost two hundred years before Donna Summer hit it big in Fire Island discos.
Now -- did the ancient Greeks themselves think of this sort of friendship between men as having a "romantic dimension?"
Yes -- absolutely.
It's all over their literature.
Devoted male companions like Orestes and Pylades abound -- both mythically and then in memoirists like Xenophon and historians like Plutarch.
But such figures -- like Orestes and Pylades -- were NOT "gay."
Nor were they "straight."
They were just MEN.
Actually, MEN and WARRIORS.
Who loved each other and showed great devotion to each other.
And who also got married, among other things.
To characterize their relationship as a "gay love story" in 21st century terms is to effectively deny their Masculinity, and instead try to stick them into that bizarre analist box of anal, promiscuity, and effeminacy, which had NOTHING to do with their lives.
These are Greek heroes.
They're not effeminate, they're not promiscuous, and they're not doing anal.
So this is not a "gay love story."
Not as the word "gay" is commonly used in the popular press today.
This is a story of love between two MASCULINE MEN -- WARRIORS -- who in war were constantly at each other's back.
And who looked out for each other in other ways.
According to the ancient author Apollodorus -- who wrote a sort of compendium of Greek mythology -- Orestes and Pylades were boyhood friends who were raised together and were hugely devoted to each other, in the manner of Achilles and Patroclus.
Like I say, very common in Greek mythology and Greek history.
After Orestes killed his mother to revenge his father's death at her hands, Orestes and Pylades went to Taurus, where Orestes was reunited with his sister Iphegenia.
Later, Orestes arranged for his friend Pylades to marry his other sister, Electra.
Where have we seen this pattern before?
It's common in Greek mythology, in one form or another; for example, Warriors Polyneices and Tydeus, who meet in a quarrel and then become fast friends and allies, both marry the daughters of King Adrastos.
And we also see it among the Hebrews:
In the story of David and Jonathan, where David marries Jonathan's sister Michal (1 Samuel 19:27).
Which suggests that it was common in Warrior cultures for bonded Warrior brothers to marry each other's sisters, or to marry two women from the same family -- and in that way further strengthen the bond between them.
So these are MEN who are romantically attached to each other.
Who are WARRIORS.
And who marry women.
And to characterize them as "gay" is to badly mislead the reader.
Nor is it necessary.
The reviewer wrote:
"Among great operas of the past, this one has as close as there is to a gay love story at its core."
Let's fix that:
"Among great operas of the past, this one has as close as there is to a heroically masculine love story at its core.
"Oreste, Iphigénie’s long-lost brother, is captured on the shores of Taurus along with his male companion, Pylade. In intense and physically tender portrayals, the robust, boyish baritone Lucas Meachem, as Oreste, and the ardent lyric tenor Paul Groves, as Pylade, suggest the romantic dimension of this devoted Greek friendship."
See?
That wasn't hard at all.
But that's what these battles are about, and it really makes a difference.
"Gay" is not appropriate to Orestes and Pylades.
"Heroically masculine" is.
Guys -- heroes like Orestes and Pylades are YOUR history.
And YOUR mythology.
The history and mythology of MEN.
The history and mythology of MASCULINITY and MANHOOD.
And they're being STOLEN from you.
You can see it right there in the pages of the NY Times, the nation's leading paper of record.
A story about two Warriors, heroically Masculine Men, is turned into "a gay love story."
Does that bother you?
Do you want your history back?
Your mythology?
Your LIFE?
You're going to have to fight for it.
It will not be handed you on a silver platter.
You will have to FIGHT.
Re: The Dutch Experiment
10-26-2006
What oppressed minority were Orestes and Pylade supposed to have identified with?
Were they not of the majority of men? Did they not act like men who understood this?
Re: The Dutch Experiment
10-27-2006
Thank you Frances -- those are excellent points!
"What oppressed minority were Orestes and Pylade supposed to have identified with?"
"Were they not of the majority of men?"
YES.
These men -- Orestes and Pylades and the rest of them -- were not a minority, oppressed or otherwise.
They were the majority.
And they controlled the culture.
"Did they not act like men who understood this?"
They sure did.
They did what they pleased.
If they wanted to walk around naked -- they did.
Here's famed classicist Michael Grant as I quote him in Natural Masculinity and the Weight of the Lies:
The Greek sculptors' principal theme was the masculine nude (kouros), depicting Apollo or his servants but also reflecting the dominant role of naked males in Greek daily life."
If they wanted to train in athletics and fight nude -- they did.
If they wanted to go into battle naked -- they did.
And if they wanted to take a male lover -- they did.
Grant on the Spartan ruling class:
"When these young men joined the Assembly, at the age of thirty, they had become ruthless, taciturn and unquestioning. Their predominant ethos was homosexual..."
Grant is of course misusing the word "homosexual." If their ethos was anything, it was "bisexual," but that too is a misnomer.
They were MEN.
They had passionate relationships with other MEN.
When they were ready to marry, they married.
And some of them were passionate about their wives too.
So to ghettoize them as the Times did -- is crazy.
But it's "crazy like a fox."
Because at any major newspaper -- and even most minor ones -- there's a stylebook.
And it tells the journalists, among other things, how they will refer to, let's say, American descendants of African slaves.
Are they "Negro," are they "Black," are they "people of color," are they "African-American" -- etc.
Now in this case, one might argue that the reviewer was just using "gay" as a shorthand for "same-sex."
No.
Because then he would have said "same-sex."
And that term would have been far better and more accurate.
But he didn't use same-sex, he said gay, and the Times knew he had because an editor had to approve the review.
So clearly it's okay at the Times, and my very strong suspicion is that it's preferred, to refer to any male same-sex couple or situation as "gay" -- even if it's 3000 years in the past.
Why is that okay or even preferred, when it's so clearly an anachronism?
Because the publisher says so.
Again, it's the old-time journalists' rule: Freedom of the press for those who own the presses.
Policies in the stylebook are set, ultimately, by the publisher.
And the Times now has a policy of pumping up the LGBT community whenever it can.
And very strongly supporting certain gay political causes, such as gay marriage.
And condoms -- which the Times perceives as a culture war / gay issue.
So -- the decision to use the word "gay" rather than "same-sex" is a political decision that's been made by the Times establishment.
Which is secular and vaguely left-of-center, and which now, in an 180-degree turn from where the Times was in the 1980s, chooses to treat all things LGBT as an unalloyed social good.
That's a problem.
I don't want the Times to go back to where it was in 1980 -- when they wouldn't report on AIDS or anti-gay violence or efforts to get a gay rights bill through the city council.
That was stupid and a dereliction of their journalistic duty.
But what's happening now is also a dereliction.
What I want and what we need is balance and accuracy.
How do we achieve that?
By making public our case.
But it does have to be public.
Over the years I've written to a number of Times' reporters and people who freelance for the Times.
The problem is that you guys won't do anything.
You won't set up Regional Chapters, you won't do booths at Gay Pride Festivals, and you certainly won't do something newsworthy like picketing a bath-house or rave or showing up at a community hearing on the funding of local AIDS prevention programs.
And you won't donate in sufficient numbers so that we could do advertising -- which in the proper venue would be newsworthy.
So as usual, you're the problem.
YOU need to FIGHT BACK.
Because the Times and other powerful media are not just furthering the identification of gay with anal and effeminate, but they're now saying that anal and promiscuity and effeminacy have always been core to the lives of men who love men.
And that's the basic analist agenda: anal is the alpha and omega of sex between men; all men who have sex with men are gay; and they always have been.
That's what Sonnabend said: "The rectum is a sexual organ ... Anal intercourse has been the central activity for gay men and some women for all of history."
That's a lie.
A lie uttered at a critical moment of a deadly epidemic which cost hundreds of thousands of American gay men their lives.
Yet Sonnabend put it forth.
And now the Times and other mainstream mass media are helping propagate it.
That lie -- that terrible lie -- is poisoning the lives of millions upon millions upon millions of MEN.
YOUR fellow MEN.
YOUR WARRIOR BROTHERS.
And it's poisoning YOUR LIFE too.
YOU must FIGHT BACK.
With each passing day -- with each day that you sit on your hands -- that LIE develops more and more and more power.
And ultimately it will destroy you.
YOU.
And your one sweet precious LIFE.
© All material Copyright 2006 by Bill Weintraub. All rights reserved.
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